(And the Ending of the Search for My Ancestors)
Ever since I was twelve years old, I have always wanted to know who my ancestors were, where they came from and later on, even why they did the strange things they did. When I got my computer six years ago, that was one of the first things I did - search out what information the Internet had on all the branches of my family. I live over 200 miles - at the least - from both parents' families, so I can't just jump into the car and drive to the local library to get information on my family, who lives in another state.
I have found about all I am going to find on the Internet about all my family branches and twigs. After six years of searching, joining groups, and having access to free census/state info, I didn't get much further on the two branches of my mother's family than I was five years ago, but found out that my grandmother's father married not twice but FOUR times, and had five children of his own, not to mention three other step-children. But what is significant about my mother's side of the family is that's where I inherited my love for arts and crafts, crocheting and drawing. My mother could draw cartoons, as could her mother. Both she and my Grandmother were very creative in sewing, needlework, planting gardens, and in making do with what they had. I wasn't exactly a fast learner, but I hope that I am following well in their footsteps, at least in those areas. My grandmother married a man that was proficient at carpentry, blacksmithing, farming, and woodcarving. He even was the undertaker for the great-grandfather I mentioned. I think I get my appreciation for other arts and crafts from my Grandfather Hall, even though he died ten months before I was born, from a massive heart attack, at age 58.
I am now compiling a notebook of family information from the materials I have found from my research - not because I have children to pass this information onto (which I don't) - but in the event I should lose this hard-sought information in my computer somehow. I have the names of the children of my direct lineage, as well as the the names of other wives that did not contribute to my gene pool. I have found copies of marriage and death certificates, and learned that the same great grandfather that married four times, had five children and three step children worked as a farmer and died at the age of 57 as a result of giving in to the effects of Rheumatism. I have osteo-arthritis, endometriosis, depression and mild scoliosis, inherited from that side of the family, and can understand why my great-grandfather gave up. Arthritis sometimes is continually painful, as well as damaging bones and joints, and sometimes you can't do the things you used to enjoy doing very much. It gets VERY discouraging, although sometimes, I have good spells and can do more at times than at other times. I have to pace myself and not over-do. The same rules also apply to my dealing with endometriosis. And when I hurt, that is when the depression gets worse for me.
But on my dad's side of the family, I also have a chance at having a long-lived gene. My grandfather Gibson died at the age of 94, months after having a stroke. He had sisters that lived to 101 and 105. His oldest daughter can run circles around me anytime, and she is almost 80 years old. From that side of the family, I have my love of music and critters.
I have started studying mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups, and would like to see if what they found on some familiar surnames in the Cumberland Gap actually apply to what they would find, should I ever decide to - and can afford - to get my DNA tested.
With the ending of my hobby in genealogy, I am contemplating picking up another old hobby. I have the paints and pencils. I have the brushes and some left-over canvasses. I have the technology......... And I am armed with a Bob Ross Joy of Painting book. Uh-oh..........
Part of my own therapy in dealing with my issues is keeping busy. I have had no trouble keeping busy, even though I don't have an outside job or children. I have critters and a husband that keep me hopping, as well as playing catch-up in getting my house in order, making bath salts and soaps, crocheting, and doing regular chores and errands as well. If I am too idle for long, my "issues" start rearing their ugly heads and before I know it, I am having a hissy over some unrelated thing because I am mad at not having children or having had fulfilled the dreams I had for my life ("My Story" tells about the struggle to find my calling). Keeping busy or interested in different things, journaling, along with medication helps keep me on a fairly even keel, but most importantly, my faith walk has helped me the most. With my faith walk, things are not near as hopeless, although they may be bad.
I am wandering from the subject, so I will close for now. But not before including some pictures of my past art work. They are not for sale, but enjoy.............
This is a picture I drew from a composite of two different photos of my Dad when he was younger. The smiling, happy face was drawn from an Air Force picture that was taken of Dad when he was 19, in uniform. The body drawing was of a picture of Dad when he was 15, at his parents' and grandparents' homestead in Poplar Creek/Bryant's Store, Ky. In the original picture of the body shot, Dad had a sour look on his face (what I could see of it) and was barefooted, because he had a boil on top of one of his feet. This was first drawn out lightly with pencil, then the colors were done with layered shades of different colored pencils and blended with a clear blending marker. The date I finished this portrait was May 29, 1991.
I think I did this sometime between 1985-1989, while house-sitting for a friend of mine. At the time, I was working for a sewing factory that made ball caps and sports jackets, and one of the canvas tote baskets had the Dandy Dux logo on it. That inspired me to draw this little guy. This was LONG before I got married and got into raising chickens and ducks as pets. This was drawn by pencil, colored with regular generic markers, and detailed with fine-tipped permanent black marker. Originally, this duck was glued to another piece of paper, inside a red circle - my first attempt at layout art.
This was a crayon and color pencil drawing done in 1988, on regular drawing paper, drawn from imagination. A lot of my past drawings were drawn from imagination and are roughly drawn, no finer details added.
This was inspired by the passage in Matthew 23:37: "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing (!)." (New International Version, the exclamation mark in parenthesis as written in Luke 13:34). I have not gotten around to making a background for this picture yet. This picture was done in color pencil and blended in with a clear marker, done by imagination. I finished drawing this part of the picture in the summer of 2006. I just love the proud expression on the hen's little face.........
I tried my hand at layout art (again) by doing the Ten Commandments on parchment paper, and I can't remember when I did this. I think I did this about a year after the flood in New Richmond, Ohio, and I had given a framed copy of this to friends that went to a little church (Shiloh) about two miles from there. I used the leaves and vine side border templates and glued/taped them to the sides of the tablet. I also glued/taped the Hebrew lettering to the top lobes of the tablets. I got these templates from a book that has all sorts of non-copyrighted templates that you can freely use in any artwork/graphics. I then made a final copy of the total template I literally cut and pasted on my old scanner, then typed in the Ten Commandments. I printed that, then colored the leaves and other graphics, then laminated the paper. It wasn't nearly as fun as drawing from looking at a picture or drawing from imagination, and I didn't get it as straight as I would have liked, but I liked the end product. Besides using the powdered black copier ink on the parchment, the coloring was done by art marker, regular marker and gold permanent marker.